In Magazine: cabinet ministers struggle to master the intricacies of Czech,
a passer-by shames a road maintenance company by getting down to work on an
unfinished pavement and Czech researchers say men’s facial traits reflect
their intelligence, or lack of it, as the case may be.

Andrej Babiš, photo: Filip Jandourek
They say Czech is a difficult language to master and some of the
country’s cabinet ministers provide ample proof of this. The internet
daily novinky.cz this week poked fun of the language level of some
government press conferences noting that “one minister mumbles, another
makes grammar mistakes and a third sometimes has trouble putting a sentence
together”. Where some might have lashed back, the ministers in question
expressed surprising humility regarding their linguistic failings,
admitting that they were taking lessons from a language coach. Finance
Minister Andrej Babiš –who sometimes peppers his speech with Slovak
expressions, sparking jokes that he speaks neither Czech nor Slovak, says
his Slovak origin is not the main reason for the number of mistakes he
makes. “I am excessively nervous, particularly when speaking to the media
and it really shows in how I express myself,” Babiš admitted. The
finance minister has a language coach but says he has little time to spare
for lessons at present. Agriculture minister Martin Jurečka is also keen
to take lessons. He is the one who mumbles – saying that when he
concentrates on what he wants to say he forgets about elocution. His coach
makes him practice pronouncing vowels and repeat children’s’ rhymes but
he too is rushed for time since the birth of his fourth child. The third
sinner –singled out by the daily for attention – is in the worst
situation of all since he holds the post of education minister. “If one
is education minister it does not do to irritate Czech language teachers”
Marcek Chládek noted self-critically, saying that he was now taking
lessons every ten days. “When I asked the coach to see me she thought she
was coming for a dressing down,” the education minister recalled.

Illustrative photo: Kristýna Maková
Police in the town of Ivančice were called to a bizarre case last week
when a construction firm called to say someone had tampered with their work
material. It turned out that a man walking across the town’s cobbled
square was irritated by an unfinished job – a big gaping hole in the
cobbled pavement. Seeing a pile of cobblestones nearby with the necessary
work equipment someone had laid aside the man promptly went to work laying
down cobblestone after cobble stone with surprising skill. It turned out
that he was a road maintenance worker by profession and simply went about
what he was used to doing. The police gave him a Breathalyzer test and
found that his work zest was also fuelled by a substantial amount of
spirits.

'Bad Place Pub', photo: Google Street View
The internet daily idnes is running a competition in which readers have
been invited to send in a snapshot of pubs, shops, coffeehouses and
restaurants with funny names. There are close to sixty entries from around
the country and abroad. Among the pubs you may come across in the Czech
Republic are the Bad Place Pub, At the old Swine, At the Dead Bird, Crisis
Pub, Kafka Dead Drunk or Happiness Handouts. There is a knife sharpening
store run by Mr. Blunt, and further afield the YakDonald eatery in Nepal
and the Sorry Mom Tattoo salon in the United States.

Kateřina Zemanová, photo: OISV, CC BY-SA 3.0
The president’s daughter Kateřina Zemanová is planning to get a
university degree in Sweden, according to the internet daily Novinky.cz.
Kateřina Zemanová, who unlike her camera-shy mother enjoys being in the
limelight, is graduating from secondary school in the coming weeks and has
set her sights on the Swedish city of Lund. Her parents insist that she
finance part of her studies by working through the summer like any other
teenager while Katerina herself is hoping for a student grant.

Photo: CTK
Three people –two men and one woman - received the Gentleman on the Road
Award for 2013. They helped save the life of a man who was trapped in a
burning vehicle following a serious road accident, pulling him out at the
eleventh hour at their own risk. The title Gentleman on the Road goes to
any driver who risks their own life to help others in a crisis. It was set
up in 2004 by the Czech Police Force and the country’s leading insurance
company Česká Pojištovna in an effort to encourage greater consideration
for others among Czech drivers.

Illustrative photo: Gabriella Fabbri / Stock.XCHNG
Czech researchers from Charles University have embarked on a fascinating
study – they are trying to ascertain whether facial traits reflect a
person’s intelligence. The initial phase of study indicated that this
appears to be the case in men but not in women. According to the head of
the research team biologist Karel Kleisner tests with 160 volunteers showed
that people judging a man’s intelligence by their facial traits and
possibly expression were right in more cases than could have been accounted
for by chance. Eighty people were photographed - free of makeup and
accessories – and their photos were given to another group of volunteers
who were asked to mark the degree of intelligence they would ascribe to
each person – grading fluid intelligence and figural intelligence
separately. In men the results more frequently coincided with the results
of genuine IQ tests, while in women the answers were way off. The team of
scientists are now studying what facial traits in men led the team of
respondents to the right conclusions. One theory they have is that the
degree of intelligence in a facial expression is acquired during hormonal
changes in puberty. The other theory, which they think may account for why
female faces are a mystery to respondents, is that in women the perception
of female attraction crowds out the traits that spell intelligence. Well,
maybe it’s a good thing they haven’t got all the answers and some
degree of uncertainty remains when you are looking at your better half.